Paper currency now seen as a COVID risk, former RBI man says banks should take to Whatsapp

Hyderabad: As people are hesitant to deal with paper currency due to the COVID-19 crisis, banks need to exploit various tools such as WhatsApp to push digital plans, former RBI deputy governor HR Khan said here on Friday.

He said as lockdown prompted many organisations to adopt work from home culture, human resources aspects may be tweaked to focus on outcome rather than attendance.

Covid-19 crisis provides an opportunity to revive, re-invent and move more banking products and services to the digital platforms, he said.

Customers are hesitant to deal with paper currency or visit the branch premises at this point; this would help in digital push, Khan said.

“We need to expand other customer-facing products similarly. Whatsapp is being used in a big way, even by old people though they are not digitally savvy. We need to learn the right lessons from such tools and plan our strategies like doing banking from home to reach out to customers across segments, he said.

He was addressing on “Covid-19 Pandemics & BCCP in Banks: People Perspectives” at the Institute for Development and Research in Banking Technology (IDRBT) through videoconferencing.

According to him, there is a need to move from strict individualistic hierarchies to hybrid, distributed working models aimed towards teamwork and collaboration.  Banks should identify and benefit from employees who can multi-task even as reskilling employees, especially through e-learning, can help create a multi-skilled workforce, he said.

Asserting that data confidentiality and infrastructural challenges are critical in the banking industry, Khan said many banks lack common shared repositories and databases, which have now become important.  After the experience of lockdown which forced many people to work from home, which poses its own challenges, Khan said, HR aspects may be tweaked to focus on outcomes rather than attendance.  Technology can be exploited to ensure employees professional and psychological well-being.” In parallel, the banking industry has to flag the regulatory, legal and taxation-related issues that may arise from work from home (WFH) and other distributed and flexible forms of working landscape, he added.